Welp, I’m all convinced and stuff now

Atheism is a ‘guy thing,’ I would say, like needlepoint is a ‘girl thing.’

We don’t have to consider why the sexes fall (or are pushed) into these particular roles; they just are. And with that simple argument, we’re done. By golly, we ought to make the guy who said it some kind of leader of the atheist movement. We wouldn’t want to have him wasting his time on things like needlepoint, you know.

Comments

I am extremely glad you clarified that comment. This is starting to compare to listening to an elementary school student play violin – yes they need to practice, but it does not have to be in earshot the entire time.

I go to bed, get up, and see a thread on sexism has exploded. And the only new thing I have to take away from all this is that I’m missing chances to use the word science more. I am going to make an effort to change that.

Based on my grading thus far I would suggest that the apology is to his profs is in order. Once someone that dense has decided something is true™ it is utter hell to try and wedge it back out again.

I offer as proof the stuff that comes out of my students mouths after we spend a few weeks talking about paleothermometry, current temperature trends, thickness of ice sheets, carbon dioxide measurements etc. etc. And they still answer questions with “I believe” or something about “the ozone hole.” It is like beating my head against a wall.

pHred: Oh yeah. I’ve been teaching Sociology classes. I spend all semester discussing major social movements in US history, and the minute we pass the 1980s, three quarters of the people in the class shut down.

And then I ask them questions about the relationship in the US between the Puritan work ethic and our collective scorn of welfare, and half the class can’t remember the lecture and another quarter remember the lecture and hate the ideas (and ain’t changing their mind for me.) Fortunately, this is a senior and junior level class, so I at least tend to get students who are a little better at reading comprehension.

But god help me when I introduce stats and methodology. I won’t even let them write papers anymore because of what happens when I get them.

The very thought of giving essay exams to my intro class makes my mind go blank with fear. Some of them can’t even make a coherent sentence on a 3×5 card after you have presented the sentence to them in technicolor. Seriously – one of the questions on the exit slip the last week of class was “What is the date, time and location of the final exam?” – which was still written on the blackboard. Some of them still managed to get it wrong!

I’m sick to tears of all this pseudo-religious ahistorical libertarian Just World fallacy-based sexism. There’s no reason to act as though individuals exist outside of a culture with a long history of bigotry and violence against people who aren’t upper-class white Christian* men. If you honestly deal with cultural issues, you don’t fall into the ignorant notion that the way things are is the way things have to be. If you reject illogical libertarian dogma, you can grasp that the world doesn’t magically just put everyone and everything where it should be as long as no one interferes with the way things are.

“It’s a guy thing” doesn’t tell you anything, and is a profoundly stupid comment to make, let alone attempt to defend. The fact that people calling themselves skeptics, people who feel entitled to leadership positions no less, are incapable of forming an argument greater than one step away from “girls have cooties, and if you do girls stuff you’ll get girl cooties too!”? Yeah, there’s less and less reason to take the skeptical”movement” seriously every day.

pHred: I used to teach comp and make them hate me. (Their projects in class were to rewrite the same three essays until they resembled the standard for college writing.) The class was 2/3 beating down objections to having to edit and create college-worthy writing. And let me tell you, I’ve been called everything you can imagine in the classroom for it, to my face.

I’ve also been that student in early math classes, for which I’m really sorry. For me it was equal parts fear of catastrophic failure and mismatch between the knowledge I possessed and the knowledge the prof assumed I possessed.

Fortunately, my trig teacher told me that math wasn’t for me (or women.) I was so annoyed I took more math classes because no way was someone going to bar me from learning something. :D

I’m on my smartphone and since my testosterone poisoned word deficient man-brain hasn’t figured out how to do cut’n’paste in iOS, I can’t provide the exact link, but if you google “human computer” the Wikipedia article that comes up high on the search list is an enlightening place to start. You may notice that the profession started closed to women in the 17th century, then flipped to become dominated by women (paid at half the rate of men, of course) in the early 20th, then vanished once the electronic version arrived for the second half of the 20th. And yes, they were a big part of the WWII code breaking efforts.

Back in those halcyon days, computer, along with secretary, was one of the few socially acceptable vocations a young, intelligent, well educated woman could have during that formative period when it was acceptable for her to actually earn a wage, after leaving pappy and before landing hubby.

The corollary to this of course is that electronic nerd culture was basically born shafting women and continues in that grand tradition to this day. (Ironic though it may be that the very first cohort of programmers were drawn from the pool of human computers and were almost all women, back to Babbage’s assistant Ada Lovelace.)

*I says “There’s no reason to act as though individuals exist outside of a culture with a long history of bigotry and violence against people who aren’t upper-class white Christian* men” but I also note that upper-class white ATHEIST men have no problem recognizing and opposing Christian privilege… you know, the one kind they don’t have. Amazing though that all the other privileges are non-existent to them even when pointed out to them, the same way they at least pretend to understand that sexism is wrong when Christians and especially when Muslims do it.

Getting back to the original Vaculous Remark™, I’m a woman person and teach a variety of Girly™ needlecraft. Of late, I have taught a whole lot more teenage boys than girls how to knit. Something about being able to have a socially acceptable fidget in classes, lectures, and other situations that require sitting still and one that yields hats and scarves (that can be given to girls – even better!). The gender-role transgression thing actually seems to be part of the appeal, particularly since I often give them some semi-rude, pre-formulated, and non-gendered insults with which to respond to gendered bullying.

The reason why I, as an atheist woman, don’t want to be more active in much of the secular/atheist movement is exemplified by Justin Vacula himself, as the type specimen for the bullying, gender-policing sorts who expend to much effort to shout women down and harrass them out of public roles in atheist organizations.

The reason why I, as an atheist woman, don’t want to be more active in much of the secular/atheist movement is exemplified by Justin Vacula himself, as the type specimen for the bullying, gender-policing sorts who expend to much effort to shout women down and harrass them out of public roles in atheist organizations.

Doing so would require actually discussing the substance of those papers, which I’m pretty sure he either never read or ever comprehended.

I don’t think the problem is in reading comprehension. it’s the next step up that seems to have a scratch, because the needle always jumps directly from “there’s still some difference in results, in some studies” to “women aren’t analytical”, completely missing all the steps that go between those two statements.

and he’s still not explained how holding speeches, writing books, and making tv appearances is supposed to require analytical thinking, rather than the stereotypically female verbal aptitude

Mattir, as someone who has been a crafts teacher in the past and who has talked a few men (husbands and sons of my primary customers) into doing quilting, crochet, and even (since I personally hate it) cross-stitch… please also share your remarks with me! Thank you :)

The insults generally involve some form of “I don’t know about you, dude, but my peen doesn’t fall off or grow back inside or start doing stuff it never did before just because I (knit)(grow my hair long)(other gender-policed activity).

Closely related to the line DaughterSpawn uses sometimes – “I don’t know about you, but they boys I want to date don’t think the fun parts of girls are nicely shaven calves.” (She doesn’t shave her legs, and it’s astonishing how upsetting this is for gender policing 16 year old Boy Scouts. The senior staff at her camp, on the other hand, once overheard such a comment and threatened to hang the gender policer up by his intestines if he made one more remark about her leg hair. )

Dependent variable (to be explained): why chicks don’t flock at the skeptic/nerd community

Independent variables that me and others invoked to explain the dependent variable:
1) girls have less analytical skills than men
2) girls are less argumentative and agressive than men
3) girls aren’t attracted to the nerd community
4) nerd community discriminates against girls
5!!) New argument, step right in folks: girls have less…ABSTRACT skills than men (in b4 feminists head explode of anger).

Most of you guys likened explanation 4. Me too, but since this phenomena is multi-determined, we need more independent variables. I liken them all as potentially possible. Most of you guys don’t like explanations 1-3 (and probably also would not like nr 5) because, lettuce be reality, truth hurts :)

Most of you guys reacted will ill founded arguments like: “herp derp i’m a gurll and I love math” ==> fail anecdotal evidence is fail.

#Deal with it
#Come at me bro
#bishes ain’t chit but hoes and tricks (okay, this is getting silly now, i’ll just stop with the nonsense and get with the real discussion)

darling, you wouldn’t know truth if it spit in your face. none of the shit you pulled out of your ass has any actual evidence for existing, unlike sexism; you can only deduce it from the data you’re trying to explain, which is assuming your conclusions and using circular reasoning.

and in any case, even if there were any evidence for any of that shit, it would not be capable of explaining the specific pattern of gender variance we observe, whereas intersectional discrimination can.

get with the real discussion

you won’t, of course. you’ll continue pulling shit out of your ass instead showing how your assumptions are actually based on the data. your education has failed you, massively.

Independent variables that me and others invoked to explain the dependent variable:
1) girls have less analytical skills than men
2) girls are less argumentative and agressive than men
3) girls aren’t attracted to the nerd community
4) nerd community discriminates against girls
5!!) New argument, step right in folks: girls have less…ABSTRACT skills than men (in b4 feminists head explode of anger).

1) The studies you’ve linked to directly refute your assumption that women have less math skills* than men, so you actually haven’t proven anything.

2) You haven’t backed this up with anything but your stupid ass opinion.

3) Which nerd community?

4) Which nerd community?

5) How do you know women have less “abstract” skills than men? What exactly are these “abstract” skills?

Care to try again?

*Math skills =/= analytical skills, but whatevs. Not surprised that you use the two terms interchangeably.

What is most interesting is that ahmet would look at a series of studies that show, at best, a small difference in means, with massively overlapping deviations, and then from that choose to use the value-laden term “suck” to describe the finding.

That’s kind of like saying Peyton Manning sucks at quarterbacking because he has a head to head losing record against teams coached by Bill Belichuk.

This, methinks, in common parlance, is what one could call a “tell”.

What is only slightly less interesting is that ahmet would look at the same set of data, with small differences in means and vastly larger ranges of overlapping deviations, and choose to use the value-laden term “a given” to describe that finding.

Because if there is one thing a set of small differences in means with vastly larger ranges of overlapping deviations is not, is “a given”.

And that too, in layperson’s parlance, is a “tell”. Of something entirely different, but perhaps equally illuminating pertaining to the question of just what kind of person ahmetduran is.

Fair enough, I’ll change my wording:

It’s a given(aka well established fact) that females, as opposed to males, fail at math by a small degree.

Good enough ?

(and this in turn explains, only in part, potentially, why females don’t flock to the skeptic society since the society, assuming, has at least an analytical root (if not, this argument flies out the window)

It’s a given(aka well established fact) that females, as opposed to males, fail at math by a small degree.

Good enough ?

(and this in turn explains, only in part, potentially, why females don’t flock to the skeptic society since the society, assuming, has at least an analytical root (if not, this argument flies out the window)

LOLwut?

Your argument is that women are slightly worse at math than men, therefore we avoid everything with an “analytical root”? DOES NOT FOLLOW.

And, frankly, atheist groups do NOT typically have analytic roots. There are any number of people attracted to atheism because they think it allows them to look down on the religious, not because they’ve engaged in a process of serious self-reflection and consistent analysis.

English isn’t your first language, fine. It’s not mine either. Or second, for that matter. So when people advise you about something language related do take notice.

Don’t call grown women girls. I’m right now giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you are not doing it to be a dismissive asshole but from ignorance. Correct it.

It’s not important whether I call it girls, females, chicks, sloots, bishes. or men, boys, male, alpha, etc.
If particular concepts are irrelevant, i’ll just use my own wording. (instead of ‘fail’ at math, I use ‘suck’. They are simply synonyms, euphemisms and pejoratives. I really really really (yeah really!) prefer to use my own wordings, so no deal!

And, frankly, atheist groups do NOT typically have analytic roots. There are any number of people attracted to atheism because they think it allows them to look down on the religious, not because they’ve engaged in a process of serious self-reflection and consistent analysis.

I posted an article here where there was a causual links between analytical thinking and atheism.
The guy/girl with red avatar also responded on that, so I’ll show you and him/her simultaneously that they ARE linked.

But indeed, if it’s the case that atheist groups are not by any means analytical in one way or another, than obviously my argument of ‘girls = less analytical’ doesn’t hold anymore.

ahmetduran: I should say that my personal criteria for analytical types requires them critically examine not just things outside themselves, but things inside them selves. It also entails a strong drive to be accurate and equitable.

Also because, according to you at least, “girls” do better at verbal reasoning. So, of course, math must be the salient measure.

I don’t quite follow this reasoning.
Girls are indeed better at verbal ability (i’m sorry, it was not verbal reasoning, but verbal ability) as opposed to boys. (suddenly nobody asks for a study to back this up, they happily accept it :) )

Math is indeed the salient measure BECAUSE we are talking about analytical stuff. Math is a part of that. Verbal ability is, to my knowledge, not an index of analytical skills.

‘Verbal ability’ is typically measured in the psychological literature as in: name up every word that begins with ‘a’. Females fare better at this kind of tasks than boys do.

I don’t know how I would interpret these findings and relate it to explain the dependent variable.

If particular concepts are irrelevant, i’ll just use my own wording. (instead of ‘fail’ at math, I use ‘suck’. They are simply synonyms, euphemisms and pejoratives. I really really really (yeah really!) prefer to use my own wordings, so no deal!

It is telling once again, that duranahmet, when deciding to present an alternative to his deliberate use of the value-laden term “suck”, should choose, of his own free will, the value-laden term “fail”.

It is also telling that he recognizes that a term can be a pejorative, but when presented with the option of thinking of an alternative to a perjorative, he willfully chooses ANOTHER PEJORATIVE.

I say again. Peyton Manning is 5-8 head to head against Tom Brady. If someone willfully chooses to use describe Peyton Manning as “failing” at being a quarterback, and cites this statistic as a reason, what that does tell us about what kind of football fan that person is?

I guess it is a demonstration fo duranahmet’s testosterone addled language-deficient man-brain that he apparently does not comprehend that CHOICE OF SYNONYM MATTERS, because synonyms have overlapping BUT NOT EXACTLY MATCHING meanings and connotations. There is nothing “simple” about the choice of synonyms to use.

(and this in turn explains, only in part, potentially, why females don’t flock to the skeptic society since the society, assuming, has at least an analytical root (if not, this argument flies out the window)

there it is again, the skipping to the conclusions that simply don’t follow. (and I notice that now it’s “skeptical society”; not atheism, and not secularism.) even if there were a significant, consistent difference in math scores, it wouldn’t follow that this difference is skill based (see: stereotype threat); even if there were an actual skill-based difference in math, if wouldn’t follow that this would translate to more broader, non-numerical forms of analytical thinking. even if math were the same as analytical thinking, it wouldn’t follow that this would have anything to do with atheism/skepticism, since there is a broad range of skills, abilities, and social determinants that correlate with atheism/skepticism, and that are useful in being/becoming a skeptic/atheist.

‘Verbal ability’ is typically measured in the psychological literature as in: name up every word that begins with ‘a’. Females fare better at this kind of tasks than boys do.

Wut? I don’t believe that you’ve ever taking a psych course. You should really stop lying on your facebook page.

And, no, no one agrees with your “verbal reasoning” statement, they were going along with you for the sake of argument– Jadehawk asked MANY MANY times why someone with higher verbal reasoning skills would be prevented from writing books and making speeches.

Okay, well I have to leave the conversation to go take graduate statistics final (soon to be done with the first year and a half of graduate statistics). I’ll check by later this afternoon for response.

ahmetduran: So which is it: trying to float between points of view to avoid having to own any errors or just so damn bad at reading for comprehension that you don’t know you’re all over the place?

My money is on a mix of the two. Protip: if you want to have a discussion, you also have to be open to changing your mind in the presence of better information.

You’ve been given an excess of evidence and pointed to even more, you intellectual coward.

I certainly have no interest in joining in a community that is composed of guys who are convinced that women, on average, “fail” or “suck” at math, and therefore they are less capable/interested in analytical thinking, and therefore that’s why there aren’t very many women around in the first place. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Life’s too short to waste hanging out with jokers who aren’t as smart as they think they are, and compensate for their intellectual shortcomings by inventing elaborate fantasies about why at least men are better, on average, than women, at least, at math.

Wut? I don’t believe that you’ve ever taking a psych course. You should really stop lying on your facebook page.

And, no, no one agrees with your “verbal reasoning” statement, they were going along with you for the sake of argument– Jadehawk asked MANY MANY times why someone with higher verbal reasoning skills would be prevented from writing books and making speeches.

You can’t even keep your opinions consistent.

Pls refer to her post!

I’ll try to explain to this supposedly discrepancy.

Women have higher verbal abilities. That’s nice. What do they do with it ? No, they don’t discuss endlessly about god. More like what make up to wear, what to cook, if their newly bought dresses look nice and discuss their time of the month.

You understand what i’m getting at ?

Verbal ability isn’t a precondition for: i’m good at speaking, so I can speak for whatever stuff. What kind of bullchit reasoning is this, lmao. This reasoning did came from a women, so THATS very telling :D

ahmetduran:
I’m not doing your fucking research for you. You made the claim, you have to back that shit up.

Did you read your own links? From the first one:

First, the average sex difference is very small; a confidence interval for it covers zero, though the interval lies mainly on the side of male advantage. Second, sex differences in performance are decreasing over the years.

Once again, the paper doesn’t appear to address why there are sex differences. But seeing as they are decreasing one can reasonably assume that there aren’t inherent intellectual differences between men and women, otherwise the data would remain static, wouldn’t it?

Moving to cross-country comparisons, we find that earlier results linking the gender gap in math to measures of gender equality are sensitive to the inclusion of Muslim countries, where in spite of women’s low status, there is little or no gender gap in math.

How do you account for there being no gender gap in math in some countries?

Lol, I’ve been called a lot of things here (chewing cupcake of whatever), but it’s only sexist when men do it I suppose.

LOl wow you are an extreme dipshit, aren’t you. You’ve done nothing but puke sexism all over this thread. And, while everyone is mocking your cowardly, unintelligent, bigotted ass, NO ONE has said anything to you remotely sexist towards men.

You’re a disgusting liar, a pathetic bigot and a ridiculous coward. I’m starting to pity you.

Women have higher verbal abilities. That’s nice. What do they do with it ? No, they don’t discuss endlessly about god. More like what make up to wear, what to cook, if their newly bought dresses look nice and discuss their time of the month.

makes me think that ahmetduran is just an internet troll wasting out time. Nobody can be this clueless for real, can they? This sounds like he never even met an actual woman in real life.

makes me think that ahmetduran is just an internet troll wasting out time. Nobody can be this clueless for real, can they? This sounds like he never even met an actual woman in real life.

Then you didn’t understand my post.

Someone said: since girls are better at verbal skills, then why aren’t they suited for the nerd community because they will be all book talking and chit.

But the obvious mistake the person makes is that ‘verbal skills’ doesn’t mean that they can talk about whatever subject. Individuals talk about what they prefer and within the sex of girls, talking about an abstract god, testing ideas and discussing with others is not a part of that.

Verbal skills mean more like:
male: hey bro, sup?
Females: oh hai stephanie, how are you feeling right now, tell me all about your insecurities girlfiend, love you <3<3<3<3<3<3 live love laugh love you so much baby boo <3<3<3<3

I’ve been called a lot of things here (chewing cupcake of whatever), but it’s only sexist when men do it I suppose.

How is the term ‘cupcake’, in the context of an insult, sexist all of a sudden? It was created to be a specifically non-gendered term of contempt, so I would be very interested to learn how it has suddenly acquired a sexist connotation.

Also, accusing other people of sexism when you have written such things as the following @ 586;

Women have higher verbal abilities. That’s nice. What do they do with it ? No, they don’t discuss endlessly about god. More like what make up to wear, what to cook, if their newly bought dresses look nice and discuss their time of the month.

Is rather ridiculous – here you make grossly patronising assumptions about what ‘women’ as a generalised group talk about that seem to have been imported directly from the most misogynistic phase of the 1950s. Where is your basis for this belittling attitude toward womens’ capacity for conversation? I somehow doubt there are many scientifically credible studies purporting to demonstrate that ‘most’ women like to talk about cookery, fashion, make up and their menstrual cycles to the exclusion of more ‘analytical’ topics, so I wonder where you get this belief from, other than your own confirmation bias about the supposed intellectual inferiority of women.

And there is a term for an attitude that assumes that women are less capable based solely upon their gender. Now what was it…

suddenly nobody asks for a study to back this up, they happily accept it :) )

“they” don’t, actually. fucking earn to read for comprehension.

Math is indeed the salient measure BECAUSE we are talking about analytical stuff.

evidence or it didn’t happen.

Math is a part of that.

if “that” is supposed to be atheism and/or skepticism, I want to see the mathematical formula one needs to master to deconvert, disbelieve in UFOs or bigfoot, etc.

Verbal ability is, to my knowledge, not an index of analytical skills.

I pity anyone who’s ever had to grade a paper of yours, then.

I don’t know how I would interpret these findings and relate it to explain the dependent variable.

yeah, that’s evident.

No circular reasoning ;)

superdense.
you don’t know any such thing, you infer it from the data you’re trying to explain. that’s circular, since the logic goes “lower scores in math/philosophy/science are explained because women have lesser analytical ability; the evidence that women have have less analytical skill is that they have lower scores in math/philosophy/science”

using that sort of logic, I could show that it’s actually because boys are telepathic and can read professor’s minds. the evidence for that is in the scores, you know. [/sarc]

No, they don’t discuss endlessly about god. More like what make up to wear, what to cook, if their newly bought dresses look nice and discuss their time of the month.

your unsubstantiated prejudices are not a valid argument

yes, i’m very much offended by don’t.

irrelevant, since that’s not what makes something sexist.

Btw, what about my totally new explanations, you guys seem to be ignoring that

your failure to read does not constitute ignoring of your arguments on our part.

I have suggestive evidence that any person that spends an inordinately large proportion of their time on the subset of the internet associated loosely with the *chans (such as 4ch/MISC/reddit) end up as blathering, meme-spouting sexist idiots.

if “that” is supposed to be atheism and/or skepticism, I want to see the mathematical formula one needs to master to deconvert, disbelieve in UFOs or bigfoot, etc.

Lol, is that how you perceive the link between analytical and disbelief in god ? My god, you females and math are something.

Let me try to explain. Math is an index for analytical skills. This means that if you score high on any particular math test implicates that you have an highly analytical brain (compared to people who score low on math tests and thus are presumed to have a low analytical brain). Now, we also happen to know that an analytical brain is more likely to disbelief in god. Magic word is MORE LIKELY. (so pls don’t say: herp derp newton was analytical and believed in god derp)

At least thank you for responding rationally on the subject, you at least try :)

Just for fun, I will also point out now that mathematics is a form of language, and that written language is a form of mathematical code, and that the parsing of written language is an exercise in the analysis of informational code.

Therefore, IF it is true that females are superior at verbal reasoning, while males are superior at say, visuo-spatial reasoning, it does not follow from any of that that the potential of female performance in math should necessarily be precluded from ever being equal to or superior to, that of males.

As with most complex behaviors, math does not constitute a single cognitive skill of domain of function, but of several. Perhaps it will turn out that females on average do math “differently” with a different weighting to the varying cognitive domains that make up math, than males on average. It does not follow from that that one gender or the other is biologically or even sociologically predetermined to do better than the other.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Or read a map. Or write a sonnet. Or derive a proof.

I have suggestive evidence that any person that spends an inordinately large proportion of their time on the subset of the internet associated loosely with the *chans (such as 4ch/MISC/reddit) end up as blathering, meme-spouting sexist idiots.

But you don’t understand! Somebody is wrong on the internet!!!

But in all seriousness, I’m just testing my ideas.

I had these 4 explanations in mind and thought of using it in a ‘female environment’. Gotta admit, lulz were had, but more importantly: I just want to know what kind of arguments feminists have. Turned out they don’t have any besides calling the person ‘sexist’ :D

Feelsgoodman.

I stick around, because I’ve read a pretty decent post of the red avatar person, but can’t seem to find it. After that, i’ll pack my bags. Lulz were certainly had :)

Lol, is that how you perceive the link between analytical and disbelief in god ?

no darling, that’s what the link between math and disbelief would have to be.

the fact that analytical thinking is the main correlation with atheism is the next step in the chain of your fractal wrongness.

Math is an index for analytical skills.

based on what evidence?

. This means that if you score high on any particular math test implicates that you have an highly analytical brain

incorrect. scoring higher on a test measures your ability to score higher on that test. only after eliminating other variables can such a test measure actual skills.

Now, we also happen to know that an analytical brain is more likely to disbelief in god.

we don’t, actually. we have a correlation, which is actually far more likely to be caused by class differences and differences in educational status rather than “analytical brain” BS. also, your silly essentialism is noted.

Perhaps it will turn out that females on average do math “differently” with a different weighting to the varying cognitive domains that make up math

Hehe, reminds me of the episode of the simpsons were Lisa get’s a female friendly version of math. Good times.

That’s pretty much the feminist strategy indeed. When girls fail at math, they just want to change the math.
When females don’t get selected for a business environment, they’ll just change the environment and fit right in that way.

So, cupcake, how do you account for official atheist groups like (gasp) SecularWoman or conferences like Women in Skepticism or social network groups like Atheist and Agnostic Crafters (Ravelry, a huge group) or Crafting without Religion (FB, way way smaller).

For that matter, how do you account for the perception that knitting, crochet, needlepoint, weaving, and the like are female-gendered activities in our culture, despite the fact that they are chock full of (gasp) mathematics? (Indeed, crochet can be used to model hyperbolic geometry despite the fact that mathematicians used to say that accurate construction of hyperbolic models was impossible.)

Even as skeptical a sciencey-man-man as Richard Feynman recognized this in a 1966 speech to science teachers. (Dated language, but excellent analysis of the importance of the vocabulary we use to describe mathematical and scientific concepts.)

She attends her first-period math class, taught by the new principal, but instead of usual number-crunching, she starts speaking about feelings and smell in math. While the other girls enjoy it, Lisa asks whether they will get down to doing problems, to which the principal replies that problems are how boys look at math.

When girls fail at math, they just want to change the math.
When females don’t get selected for a business environment, they’ll just change the environment and fit right in that way.

So what? If such a change results in females doing better at math, thus DOUBLING the potential pool of mathematical skill that humanity can draw upon to solve its collective problems, or performing better in the business environment, thus DOUBLING the potential pool of economic ability for humanity to draw upon, how is this not anything but a good thing?

Is it not the RESULT that matters? You babble on and on about differences between average math scores between men and women, but what about the AGGREGATE AVERAGE math scores for all humans? Don’t you want to RAISE it? Doesn’t everyone win when it goes up?

So, cupcake, how do you account for official atheist groups like (gasp) SecularWoman or conferences like Women in Skepticism or social network groups like Atheist and Agnostic Crafters (Ravelry, a huge group) or Crafting without Religion (FB, way way smaller).

Lol, dumb post is dumb. It’s already hotly debated why there aren’t much females in the nerd community.
Even tough females have those kind of groups (who says they didn’t), the RATIO between females in those communities and POTENTIAL females is weak.

like a creationist. it’s almost as if I hadn’t linked to one large study and a meta-study debunking the “girls suck at math” BS, and it’s as if I hadn’t deconstructed his faulty reasoning. st00pid cupcake

She attends her first-period math class, taught by the new principal, but instead of usual number-crunching, she starts speaking about feelings and smell in math. While the other girls enjoy it, Lisa asks whether they will get down to doing problems, to which the principal replies that problems are how boys look at math.

If you don’t know this episode, then you haven’t lived life

Poor, poor duranahmet.

His description of that classic episode is a stunning indicator of he completely missed the point of the joke in that episode.

A human being so deficient in verbal reasoning skills that he cannot properly comprehend and thus properly enjoy the humor of The Simpsons is a man who leads a dull, bleak life, and who doesn’t even have the cognitive werewithal to realize what he is missing.

Select away, douchebag – anything that keeps you away from the women here is a good thing. For that matter, I bet we could make a fortune if we could bottle and sell some of that keep-away potion to women who don’t trigger your feminist-low-value-ugly detection system…

I’m with Jadehawk – please ban him – this has disintegrated exactly like he is working through a checklist to see what he can get away with. There is no merit now. This is just ugly and smelling up the joint.

ahmetduran is a chew toy with the squeaker gone, go ahead and ban his rancid ass anytime PZ.

Mattir

For that matter, how do you account for the perception that knitting, crochet, needlepoint, weaving, and the like are female-gendered activities in our culture, despite the fact that they are chock full of (gasp) mathematics? (Indeed, crochet can be used to model hyperbolic geometry despite the fact that mathematicians used to say that accurate construction of hyperbolic models was impossible.)

And who discovered that you can model hyperbolic space with crochet? :gasp: A woman named Daina Taimina

So from this example it is easy to deduce that when women are not prevented from working in areas that are traditionallly male, huge scientific gains are made by looking at a problem with a new perspective.

Over the past generation, however, standardized tests in the United States have seen that gender gap completely disappear. First among elementary and middle schoolers, then among high schoolers, and today, male and female students achieve identical average math scores on the SATs.

It gets better:

The percent of students scoring above 400 (low) and above 550 (high) rise dramatically, among both genders, when there’s greater equity among men and women! In other words, every step forward that a country takes towards eliminating the gender disparity in the economic, political, and educational realms leads to greater math achievement for both genders.

But I’ll give you the conclusions of the authors themselves:

In summary, we conclude that gender equity and other sociocultural factors, not national income, school type, or religion per se, are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both boys and girls. Our findings are consistent with the gender stratified hypothesis, but not with the greater male variability, gap due to inequity, single-gender classroom, or Muslim culture hypotheses. At the individual level, this conclusion suggests that well-educated women who earn a good income are much better positioned than are poorly educated women who earn little or no money to ensure that the educational needs of their children of either gender with regard to learning mathematics are well met.

Kane: “We found that boys — as well as girls — tend to do better in math when raised in countries where females have better equality, and that’s new and important. It makes sense that when women are well-educated and earn a good income, the math scores of their children of both genders benefit.”

Mertz: “Many folks believe gender equity is a win-lose zero-sum game: If females are given more, males end up with less. Our results indicate that, at least for math achievement, gender equity is a win-win situation.”

oooh, I can’t resist anymore. Especially now that the chewtoy distraction is gone.

I’m going to present my own crazy ridiculous conspiracy theory concerning the dearth of females in the skeptic/atheist movement.

See people, it is because, contrary to popular belief, the skeptic/atheist movement isn’t about rational thinking. Not at all. Actually, at its base and heart, it is an expression of male primate dominance behavior. (And hyperskepticism the more primal, distilled, extreme version of the same)

Humans are social creatures, who exchange information between each other. Judging the reliability of said exchanged information is an intellectual exercise, when done in private and in one’s own mind, with a view towards using that information for one’s own purposes.

That, however, is not actually what the skeptic/atheist movement is about. The movement is actually about publicly communicating skepticism of popular claims.

See, when an individual makes a fact claim in public, that individual is in fact making a claim of authority on that subject, and through that authority is attempting to secure status within the community to which the communication is made. To accept that claim is to accept that authority, to acquiese to that status, to submit.

To reject that claim is instead a challenge to that authority, and an attempt to take the status associated with that authority for oneself.

Gorillas beat their chests and hoot. Humans make blog posts and youtube videos.

And that is why these so-called skeptics are so adverse to letting a woman have a forum, and to shutting up and listening to her. To them the act of listening is an act of submission. And these prancing male primates simply cannot bear to even appear to admit to having a lower social status than a female of the same species.

Which is also why there are so many males and so few females in the movement. Because the movement is a forum for male dominance behaviour, and female primates on average are more biologically inclined to watch such displays from the sidelines than to get into the arena themselves.

What are the chances that the boy ends up teaching? How many women are going to have to deal with that boy in an academic or professional situation? How many women is this boy going to help to discourage?

It’s funny how it’s always the men who have nothing going for them intellectually that will obsess over these slight statistical differences, isn’t it? And always only the categories where men as a class have been found to have an edge, and always with an insistence that the results can’t mean anything other than “men are better than women” and a refusal to acknowledge counter-data, even if it comes from the same studies they cite. It’s a very mysterious phenomenon. As a simple woman, I can only conclude that it must have something to do with how great at “analytical reasoning” they are.

Oh lordy – I suddenly have an image in my head from a conference I presented at a few months ago where some guy was trying to get into an argument with me about Rietveld refinement of a crystalline lattice structure, which I had already explained was not relevant to the question at hand (he was actually agreeing with me, but from some reason was doing it belligerently and at the top of his lungs)

And now – bam – I see him suddenly as a Gorilla throwing leaves over his head and beating his chest. Thanks – now it is going to be all I can do not to burst out laughing at this ilk at the next meeting.

BTW – I am female, look younger than my actual age (which is a serious disadvantage!) and have long strawberry red hair. Wrong tribe for these guys completely.

where some guy was trying to get into an argument with me about Rietveld refinement of a crystalline lattice structure, which I had already explained was not relevant to the question at hand (he was actually agreeing with me, but from some reason was doing it belligerently and at the top of his lungs)

THE scientific establishment, Joan said, was livid. But in contrast to the response to her earlier theory about tide pools and marine animals, few scientists engaged with her. At a workshop at Loyola University, a scientist “lost it” and started screaming at her for being irresponsible. “I had never had experiences of anyone trying to coerce me in this physically intimidating way,” she said, as she compared the reactions to her work before and after she became a woman. “You really think this guy is really going to come over and hit you.”

At a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Minneapolis, Joan said, a prominent expert jumped up on the stage after her talk and started shouting at her. Once every month or two, she said, ”I will have some man shout at me, try to physically coerce me into stopping …When I was doing the marine ecology work, they did not try to physically intimidate me and say, ‘You have not read all the literature.’

“They would not assume they were smarter. The current crop of objectors assumes they are smarter.”

Wow. ahmetduran started out looking merely (very) obtuse; now he’s really got his eyes on the prize – does he win Most Pathetic or Most Likely to Compare Unfavourably With Something I Scraped off the Sole of my Shoe?

Come on, ahmetduran, let’s have your opinions on race and socio-economic status. You already demonstrated that you are sexist and a homophobe, so you haven’t got far to go to complete the set. Hey, why are there fewer poor people than well-off people prominent in the atheist and secularist movements? Guess poor people just suck at maths, amirite? And why are most of the big-name atheists white? Guess non-whites just suck at analytical thinking, yeah?

She attends her first-period math class, taught by the new principal, but instead of usual number-crunching, she starts speaking about feelings and smell in math. While the other girls enjoy it, Lisa asks whether they will get down to doing problems, to which the principal replies that problems are how boys look at math.

What a beautiful story! Here, let me tell one as well.

It starts with: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton…”

Is Joan Roughgarden’s science any good? I’ve read Evolution’s Rainbow (my brother had it from a philosophy of science course) and I thought it was interesting, but I’m not qualified to judge the quality of her arguments.

Actually, child, it’s been you who has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t understand “on average”. I note that you still haven’t responded to my first post in this thread that demonstrates how ridiculous your claim that something has happened because of average differences is. So here, instead, I’ll explain it in more concrete terms and with less snark. Judging by your attempts at humor, you’re not actually very good with snark.

I will assume, only for the sake of argument and despite the fact that tests of reasoning do in fact contain verbal components, that math is exactly equal to analysis. I will also assume, only for the sake of argument, that we are dealing with a population in which there is a slight difference between men and women in average ability at math. I will finally assume, only for the sake of argument, that there is a precise relationship between analysis (as captured by math performance) and atheism or skepticism or whatever topic you want to change it to when other people point out that your assumptions are full of shit.

So, picture to yourself two nearly overlapping normal distributions, with the center of each to either side of a score of 100. Since we’re assuming that analysis equals math, we might as well they both equal IQ, and besides, people know what that distribution looks like. The center of one (for the men) is about five points to the right of the center of the other (for women).

Now you draw a vertical line toward the right of that set of distributions, set so that to the right of it is 8% of the overall population from both distributions combined. On this distribution, that score is right about 122.

This means that on the right of this line are your atheists, as determined by their math scores. Note that about 6% of the women in your sample are still in this group. More men than that, yes, but women are still about a third of the people in that 8%.

Even granting you every single one of your dubious claims, if you understand averages, you understand that there still should have been one woman out of three on that stage. On average.

I don’t know whether to thank you for that link or just start banging my head on the table. It is so pervasive too. This reminds me of the “service trap” too that female academic get sucked into as well. Pre-tenure (and post-tenure too if they make it) they get stuck with all sorts of scut work (act as meeting secretary, type up final reports, serve on this pointless committee, blah, blah … ) because clearly that is something women do – the men have more important research to be working on.

Contrary to popular belief, the skeptic/atheist movement isn’t about rational thinking. Not at all. At its heart it is a kissing cousin to the Republican political “southern strategy,” but broadened and applied more towards social status and class hierarchy. It is a way for upper-class educated white men, and the chill girls who manage to sneak through, to maintain their feeling of superiority over the people over whom they have always enjoyed higher status… while usually staying off the radar of a culture that increasingly rejects their regressive ideals. It is no coincidence that so much of the skeptic/atheist movement labels itself as libertarian.

Here’s probably the most famous quote about the southern strategy, from Lee Atwater:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

In a very similar way, skeptics/atheists can go after people who they used to call “poor white trash” by saying “fundamentalist evangelical Christians.” They don’t need to say “camel jockey” when “Muslim extremists” is socially acceptable. They can claim the superiority of “equity feminism” when what they mean is “bitches ain’t shit.” Satan help you if you disagree with them and don’t have 17 doctorates, because only people with advanced degrees are allowed to have opinions on any subject. And so on, for every situation where maintaining both the privilege and esteem-boosting effects of being an upper-class educated white man lording it over others is on the schedule.

They don’t care why women and non-whites and working-class people aren’t a higher percentage of their movement, because they don’t WANT any of “those sort of people” around in the first place. Well, maybe a couple of them to set up chairs and make the coffee and clean up afterwards, but you only need a few at each meeting, right?

Amphiox @513
Thank you very much for that information/heads up. It has, as was mentioned, made this thread worthwhile (or at least, as much of it as I have read).
Funny these cultural shifts. One gets the distinct feeling that we have, in fact, been moving somewhat backwards, rather than forwards, in the field of women’s rights.

(Indeed, crochet can be used to model hyperbolic geometry despite the fact that mathematicians used to say that accurate construction of hyperbolic models was impossible.)

An image just popped into my mind from yeeeaars ago. Sitting at a meeting discussing business stuff and one woman was crocheting/knitting strange little thingies. Turns out she’d found this was the best way to give her students understandable DNA models. Too long ago now to remember any details – basically my mind was overwhelmed at the size of the task making all these little gadgets for a whole year 12 biology group.

that, right there, is why nobody should have ever bothered with this shitstain to begin with; it was patently obvious from early on that he is mostly informed by what he views as “popular culture”, in this case, the Simpsons.

Just for fun, I will also point out now that mathematics is a form of language, and that written language is a form of mathematical code, and that the parsing of written language is an exercise in the analysis of informational code.

Indeed. I’d love to know* how the Belgian waffler figures verbal ability requires less analytical competence than math does. Because I’m pretty sure spending last quarter in Classical Japanese using two languages to parse out and determine the meaning of an essay in a third, dead language took a hell of a lot of analysis, even though the only math involved was converting dates between calendar systems. But what do I know?

Oh, really. So why is the stereotype that women are nagging harpies who pick fights with their menfolk all the time?

True, I need to nuance it a bit more. Men argue endlessly about analytic subjects, women argue endlesly about ….non-analytic subjects.

Because when it’s pointed out to him that the two stereotypes he’s pushing as Science Truth (women are bitchy shrews vs. women are passive dolts) are mutually exclusive, of course, of course he can’t pick just one, so he twists himself into knots trying to find a magical way for both to be true. It’s like when creationists decided Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs.

What is it with misogynists and calling women “females”? That’s like the number-one misogynist tell.

Those of you ‘dissing rug hooking better be joking/trolling. My grandmother was a hooker — out and proud. Took it up at age 50 and did it for another 50 years. If you have a problem with hooking I think you’d better have a word with xmas-tree cat here: protecting the rug at all costs